There hasn’t been a lot of variety in the tablet segment in its first couple of years, with choices mainly split between iPad-alikes and smaller units like Kindle Fire. But as the market grows, there will be a need for a bigger range of prices and form factors, and the component and software makers can see an opportunity. ARM, for instance, has unveiled a new iteration of its Mali graphics processor platform geared to low cost slates, while Mozilla is developing a browser to deliver a different user experience to the iPad.
The entry level version of ARM’s GPU design, Mali-450, aims to help chipset makers target tablets with strong graphics performance, but at a price tag below $300. The graphics processor is becoming one of the most expensive elements of the bill of materials for a large screen, visually driven device, but while companies like Nvidia and Apple itself are enhancing their high end, multicore graphics silicon, there is also rising demand for lower end tablets to run video-driven apps like games.
Mali-450 comes with up to eight cores and offers double the performance of its predecessor, the Mali-400, which topped out at four cores. The new design should appear in commercial devices in the first half of 2013.
ARM is splitting its GPU roadmap into two paths ‘ Mali-T600 family for high end chipsets and Mali-400 lower down the food chain. Both can do gaming and video playback, but only the T600s do “computational graphics’ for tasks like facial recognition, ARM told IDG News.
The UK firm aims to make its graphics processor IP as prevalent in mobile devices as its CPU technology, but it is newer to this space ‘ it entered in 2006 with the purchase of Falanx of Norway ‘ and has a strong competitor in the shape of fellow UK firm Imagination Technologies. Imagination supplies the Apple iOS platform, though ARM claims to be present in about one-fifth of Android smartphones ‘ including the Samsung Galaxy SII and SIII – and half of the tablets running the Google OS. It is targeting the sale of 100m Mali GPUs, via its licensees, this year, which would more than double last year’s figure of 48m.
Meanwhile, Mozilla is developing an iPad browser which can function as an alternative to Apple’s own Safari. The open source organization, which is also preparing a full mobile browser-based OS, is seeking greater influence in the wireless world, where it has not yet replicated the success of Firefox on the PC. It believes its chance lies in the way the HTML5 browser, along with online web services and content, are moving to the heart of the mobile experience.
It claims its new product, codenamed Junior, will ‘reinvent the browser for a new form factor’ and is the first such product to offer something ‘entirely new’ and created specifically for the larger touchscreen, rather than adapted from a smartphone or PC system. Mozilla’s Firefox UX chief developer, Alex Limi, told CNet that Safari for iPad was “a miserable experience” ‘ though still the best tablet browser available. By contrast, Junior promises a full-screen browser with no navigation or tool bars ‘ these are replaced by two control buttons, which present bookmarks, search, history and other elements, and other buttons will follow before the product goes commercial (no date for that yet).
“There are a lot of reasons we should be on iOS even though we can’t bring our rendering engine there,” Limi said.